


Six Moments

by Rìgh_Marbh (Righ_Marbh)



Series: Pride of the Summer [7]
Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 18:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20139775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Righ_Marbh/pseuds/R%C3%ACgh_Marbh
Summary: After Lancashire, Adolphus knows there’s no coming back from the things they’ve said and done which is probably why he does it.





	Six Moments

Adolphus can’t rightly believe they’re alive.

He’s not all that sure he _wants_ to be, given thing things that they’ve said and done over the last week. He can’t even remember half of it, the whole escapade is a swirling, drugged mess in his memory, but he knows he’s done unforgivable things. He doesn’t like going to England at the best of times, nothing good has ever happened to him in England and Lancashire has just proven it. Somehow though, after their first case together, Frey never left and they fell into a odd sort of pattern but after this week Adolphus knows that Frey is probably going to walk out of his life andhe’ll never see him again.

Which is probably why he’s saying nothing about the fact that Frey has been clinging to his sleeve the whole journey back from Pendle Hill to the overpriced hotel they managed to get a room in. To anyone else it must look as thought they’re both so exhausted they’re holding each other up but Adolphus can feel Frey’s nails digging into his skin and he knows that there’ll be tiny half-moon scars there to remind him, for the rest of his life, how badly he’s fucked this up.

The twin beds are barely big enough for Frey, never mind Adolphus, but it’s what they have right now and it reminds him on another hostel in another town, in what feels like another life when they sat passing a bottle of shitty wine back and forth between them.

“Fir whit it’s worth…”

“Don’t you _dare_. Don’t you fucking dare try to apologise.”

Freys voice is quiet but his words feel like a slap across the face and Adolphus, who knows it’s all over anyway, falls back on the one thing he has left.

“_Iain_…” He’s biased, he knows, but the original Gaelic has always felt so much more right on his tongue and the storm of emotion in Frey’s eyes clears for just a moment when he says it, just long enough to give him hope. “…ye’ve every right tae hate me.”

“Hate you? _Fucking hellfire_, Adolphus, I thought you were dead!” Frey flushes a deep red and throws himself off of the bed to pace the tiny room. “When you…and then…I thought…but then...”

Frey had _screamed_ and it had been like nothing Adolphus had ever heard before. Only the fact that they would both have been dead if he’d given himself up had stopped him from throwing off the disguise and running across the field.

Blindly, Adolphus reaches out to grab Frey’s had as he passes the end of the bed. He was frozen, still soaked to the skin with melted snow, and the dried blood on his hands was beginning to flake off. They both looked, and no doubt smelled, like shit.

“I’ll no fight ye fir the bath. I ken it’s mair than my life’s worth tae get atween you and hot water.”

Frey squeezes his hand and Adolphus can feel his eyes, cold and angry and calculating, raking over him. The attempt at humour fell flat but, then, he’d expected it to.

“I reckon there’s enough room for two.”

*

There definitely is not.

It’s just about the least sexy thing in the world but Adolphus mutely lets Frey settle between his legs, back pressed against his chest, because he knows that this is less about _them_ and more about Frey’s chronic, all-consuming, and not entirely irrational fear of closed doors.

In the month and a half since Frey turned up on his door step again, there’s been a handful of moments where they might have pulled their shit together and talked it through. When Elgie appeared, battered and bloody, there had been a sincerity in Frey’s voice that could have led to so much more. When the lad was nearly killed and Adolphus had burst through the door at the last minute with an ancient revolver he _definitely_ wasn’t supposed to have, that was just as likely to blow his hand off as it was to actually fire anything, Frey had all but collapsed into his arms. There had been that time he’d come into the office in the middle of a snowstorm to find Frey shivering violently in his coat with an entire pot of coffee clutched to his chest and it had taken every ounce of willpower he’d had not to pull him into his arms and refuse to let go.

The last two chances he’d had had been after Frey had come back from his uncle’s estate. He’d convinced himself that Frey wouldn’t come back at all - he’d still been in the Balmoral and he’d made no noises about finding somewhere a little more permanent to stay - but he’d cut through Waverley station to get out of the rain and walked right into Frey coming off the train and they’d just stood there for a heartbeat and this time, this time, Adolphus was just relieved to see him again…even if he was still fighting himself over the fact that this wasn’t the same man he’d fallen in love with.

Except Frey had clearly had the argument of the century with his older brother and was still flushed with indignation and when Adolphus had told him to just stay at Moray Place until he found somewhere, he had seen the real Frey under there somewhere. 

And now they were here. In a rapidly cooling bath in Lancashire and Adolphus was beginning to realise that this might be his last chance to actually do something.

Except he can’t help but think that this is also the worst possible moment to do anything.

So he does nothing.

Except not really.

Frey falls into a fitful sleep once they manage to navigate their way out of the bath and Adolphus sits up all night, not sure what he’ll do if Frey does start having the kind of dreams he wouldn’t wish on anyone, but certain that he’s not just going to sleep through it.

He can’t sleep on the train home either, because Frey (and it’s getting harder to keep thinking of him as Frey when he’s so exhausted and unguarded that he’s perilously close to being _Ian_ again) is curled up awkwardly in the seat and half-slumped against the window, staring out at the landscape rushing past them. Adolphus can only watch him out of the corner of his eye.

It means that once they arrive in Edinburgh, to find a fidgeting Constable MacNair waiting for them at the top of Waverley Steps with a missive from Campbell demanding their immediate presence, Adolphus doesn’t have the energy to argue and it’s Frey who takes his arm and pulls him away from the waiting squad car.

“You can tell Campbell we’ll be there when we’re damned well ready.”

“But sir…”

“No. Tell him that Frey says he can take a running jump into the Forth if he thinks we’re going anywhere other than to bed.”

With that, Adolphus finds himself being manhandled into the back of a taxi and then all but bundled up his own front steps. Frey doesn’t take his hands off of him until Adolphus has been unceremoniously relieved of his coat and shoved into bed.

It’s almost brusque and Frey wears a prissy frown the whole time but suddenly he’s shrugging out of _his_ coat and dropping onto the bed beside him with his arms folded across his chest.

“Shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”

“I didnae say anything.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I lied, there’s ten of these. This is what I get for clearing out my notes in preparation for New Information. This is also entirely what I get for saying ‘ha ha, wouldn’t it be fun if I did a ficlet marathon and got it all over and done with in one day.’
> 
> Someone save me from myself.


End file.
